Curatorial Statement

The idea for this exhibit came about when I recalled the story of Alexei Leonov: the cosmonaut responsible for creating the first work of art actually made in space. For many many years, I have been fascinated by Humanity’s endeavors in space, but I have always felt that people leave out the visceral and Human aspects of space travel, and focus more on the technical side of things.

To me, Leonov’s brave work of art tells us a lot about the human condition, and our relationship with art. Thus, his story was a good ‘jumping-off-point’ from which I could start breaking down  the artistic and expressive aspects of space-travel. Thus, the goal of my exhibit was to delve into the histories and stories behind the relics, messages, and memories that Humankind has deemed important enough to be launched beyond our home out into the wide and largely unknown expanse of space.

Through the exhibit, I wanted like to paint a picture of spaceflight that is less cold and sterile than what the audience might be accustomed to.One fundamental question that I asked myself was: “Why do we even bother to send unnecessary artifacts into space, if it doesn’t make the objective of the mission any easier?”. I thought that this question is one the audience was likely to ask, so I prioritized conveying a possible answer to this question throughout the exhibit.

The answer, to me, is that Humans go through with sending art into space because they want to commemorate certain parts of our history and culture, and since spaceflight is such a monumental task, it makes sense to attach parts of our heritage to it that we want to remember. In the beginning of the exhibit, I wanted to portray information chronologically, starting with the first space-art, up until the modern day examples of it. However, I realized I wanted to give the audience more freedom to immediately pursue the stories and objects they found personally interesting, rather than locking them into a linear method of storytelling.

In order to accomplish this goal, I allowed the audience to choose which Astronomical Body they would like to begin at, which would allow them to learn about all the relevant things we have sent to that particular part of space.

Overall, space-travel has been on my mind for well over a decade, and I’ve had a lot of time to think about how it fits into the grand scheme of Human endeavors. I hope this exhibit acts as a testament to the lengths human beings will go to in order to express themselves, as well as a personal statement about my own thoughts and feelings about the messages we have sent out into the cosmos.

Jacob Johnson